[HN Gopher] Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)
___________________________________________________________________
Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)
Author : Tomte
Score : 97 points
Date : 2022-11-26 20:14 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (daedtech.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (daedtech.com)
| doctor_eval wrote:
| You've pretty much described the narcissist who headed a company
| I worked for a while ago.
|
| Example real life interaction:
|
| Me: please can we defer this non critical meeting until after
| product launches in a few weeks as my team is super busy and we
| are about to sign a customer.
|
| Them: Non critical meeting is important for team building, which
| is more important than product, and must therefore go ahead.
|
| Me: ??????
|
| It was nice to read this article and finally have a place to put
| all my WTFs.
| neilv wrote:
| Some of the symptoms the article gave are painful to read,
| because that can also be what it looks like when a person is
| blocked outside of their control (e.g., another team not
| delivering, or up the chain has a problem), and trying to fix it.
|
| Before trying to assign individual blame to a part, try to debug
| the actual system problems in team and organization.
| pojzon wrote:
| When I spot ppl like that driving the company towards bottom I
| know its time to jump the ship.
|
| Over 10 years of work, jumped few times like that.
|
| Each and every time the company went to bin.
|
| Following those kind of ppl does not work, having too many of the
| also.
|
| But its very hard to push them out once they made "connections"
| and "politics" going.
| genghisjahn wrote:
| These articles come out with some regularity, and yet no one ever
| says, "Yep! That's totally me! I'm a non contributing zero but
| I've made a living at making others think I add to the team!"
| Everyone knows people like this, but no one is one.
| davesque wrote:
| I think the reality is that anyone might engage in these
| behaviors from time to time. I've seen myself doing some of
| these things in my weaker moments and I've seen others doing
| them. And I've seen those same people turn around and
| contribute positively on other days. Of course no one is going
| to categorize themselves as highly overrated. Maybe that's
| because people often don't reliably fit into specific
| categories.
| oxfordmale wrote:
| There is a fine line between being highly overrated or just
| being successful at selling your achievements. I suspect a lot
| of people start out successfully selling their genuine
| achievements, but over time realise they can just do the
| selling.
| q-big wrote:
| First: there is of course an incentive not to admit this.
|
| Second: I do believe that many people on HN really deeply care
| about technology/hacking topics and have detest for office
| politics. On the other hand, the people that the article
| discuss are good at office politics/marketing themselves and
| often don't have such a deep knowledge about programming. Thus,
| I would indeed assume that the typical HN reader/writer less
| likely fits into the "highly overrated people" pattern of the
| article.
| paulcole wrote:
| The average HN reader is highly overrated for other reasons.
|
| > have detest for office politics
|
| The problem is that many people on HN believe any interaction
| with someone with an MBA, marketing background, manager, etc.
| is "office politics."
| serverholic wrote:
| Yes because if you look at it objectively those people tend
| to be lying, manipulative people with big fake smiles on
| their faces.
|
| People are so accustomed to our messed up society that they
| don't even realize how amoral "normal" behavior is.
| q-big wrote:
| > The average HN reader is highly overrated for other
| reasons.
|
| Possibly ... ;-)
| jpmoral wrote:
| I think the problem is that people think that all office
| politics is necessarily bad.
| GoOnThenDoTell wrote:
| Any interaction with another human at work is politics
| paulcole wrote:
| Yes, but derisively referring any interaction with
| another human at work as "office politics" is the
| problem.
| serverholic wrote:
| It can turn into office politics fast. Maybe you say the
| wrong thing and now you and your coworker have an awkward
| tension.
|
| IMO it's almost never worth trying to make friends with
| your coworkers. Be nice, be helpful, and do a good job
| but keep your friends and work life separate.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I actually don't like that kind of articles at all precisely
| because I tend to find things from myself and the authors often
| do very bad job in analysing these behaviours because the
| articles are one sided "hit pieces" that essentially promote a
| narrative or a worldview.
|
| All the same behaviours can be written in a self improvement
| post on LinkedIn or something or a successful person might try
| to explain the success to these behaviours. In its core its all
| the same, broken mental models trying to explain things people
| don't understand.
|
| IMHO all these behaviour have different roots and dynamics and
| plays little role in the actual results(being successful or
| overrated).
| yarg wrote:
| I think a lot of these people are on the 'spectrum' of
| sociopathy.
|
| At very least they're superficially charming bullshitters.
|
| Either way, they're not the sort of people to call themselves
| out - even when they're fully aware of what they're doing.
| cplusplusfellow wrote:
| They make up a really small percentage of the population and
| that group generally isn't reading articles and introspecting.
| mberning wrote:
| What is the likelihood that one of these people is on such a
| site as this? They are avoiding work after all. Not trying to
| get better at it.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Hacker News is BRILLIANT for avoiding work :-)
| mberning wrote:
| Fair point. Although in my experience the most useless
| people at work usually spend working hours jacking around
| with their plex server, daytrading crypto, etc.
| drbeast wrote:
| Well, that's actually me. I do a lot of stuff on this list. No
| shame, I'm in upper management.
| theknocker wrote:
| LazyCroHacker wrote:
| Yo.
|
| Ask me anything.
|
| Edit : I'm actually serious. I don't do most of the things in
| the article, or at least definitely not with the intent and
| detail - but I've been moved over time from being a pretty good
| and certainly respected hands on techie, to a middle to upper
| manager with massive imposter syndrome. Client loves me. My
| boss loves me. My team loves me. But I myself definitely
| struggle to always understand my value and I definitely spend
| many hours each week fine tuning PowerPoint slides, reporting,
| over communicating, team building etc - which again, seems to
| make everybody happy and impressed. Maybe my hidden talent is
| communicating between techies and business? Possibly there's
| real value in my role - but DEFINITELY not according to any
| hacker news colleagues. So - AMA :)
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| The acceptance of others in our team called "society", who
| assume as a matter of human dignity that we each "add"
| something, is how we all get by and live. We're all nice
| people, terrified of growing old and alone, being left out out
| in the cold and hungry. We're all part of the same team, under
| the same shit system that makes us feel safer by devaluing
| others.
| levelforge wrote:
| This is so frustratingly true... I've seen this play out over and
| over... often these people are mistakenly promoted and eventually
| they sink the ship.
| mberning wrote:
| Man the slackware clock thing is so common. "Is that in
| confluence?" burns me up regularly. Things like how to delete a
| file in git. Or revert a file. As the number of tools required to
| build software continues to grow there are more and more
| opportunities for people to play dumb and act dopey.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I don't see how that can work. If someone does that even once
| you're going to lose respect for them. Twice and you're going
| to fire them for just not being smart enough.
| safaa2000 wrote:
| Minutia is the definitely the bikeshedding holy grail of business
| theater.
| brazzy wrote:
| That's because getting lost in minutiae happens to nearly
| everyone, even most people who are competent and hard-working.
| _Avoiding_ it is a skill not many are very good at.
| enkid wrote:
| The problem is there are times when minutiae is important.
| The skill is knowing when it is important and when it isn't.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Reminds me of crypto. Overhyped and underdelivers.
| revskill wrote:
| Why that is the matter ?
|
| The problem is in bad project management, technical leading and
| outcome management instead.
|
| Solve those issues first, and there will be no overrated people.
| tyroh wrote:
| This is precisely what's happened in our company. The project
| management head was not a servant leader and actively avoided
| doing real work while telling others what to do and promising
| to do things that never happened. Sadly, this person is still
| with our company at the time of this writing, but thankfully
| not anymore in a role where they can derail work.
|
| What really struck a nerve in me was that I had to catch all
| the work this person wasn't doing, and I only realized it after
| I got burned out from all the extra work.
|
| The bigger issue then is that you can't solve this because
| often, the person does a good job of hiding the bigger issue by
| deflecting to smaller, more pressing ones.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| JustLurking2022 wrote:
| I might believe that to some extent except that not all
| development jobs lend themselves equally to cranking out
| commits. Sure, if you're working on a well defined feature with
| all dependencies already built, you can really crank stuff out.
| However, those also tend to be the easiest jobs filled by
| junior developers. Solving the less well understood/defined
| problems often generated fewer commits per day but often
| generates more value.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| I get the strong impression that you've never led a multi-
| billion dollar organization.
|
| Don't show me the random code you built that makes a users like
| history load 500 milliseconds faster, talk to me about how to
| make the product better/more engaging/monetized!
| q-big wrote:
| > Don't show me the random code you built that makes a users
| like history load 500 milliseconds faster, talk to me about
| how to make the product better/more engaging/monetized!
|
| Honestly, if I were the CEO, I would ask for the former if I
| were looking for the good programmers to keep since these are
| the things that make the technological base of the company
| run.
|
| The answer is of course likely different if I were looking
| for the _managers_ to keep ...
| [deleted]
| furyofantares wrote:
| In the environments I've been in, it feels like all of these
| things would set off everybody's BS detectors extremely quickly
| draw_down wrote:
| 300bps wrote:
| Found myself simultaneously laughing and being horrified by
| identifying techniques used by people I've worked with.
|
| The advice at the end is spot on.
|
| _It also turned out that the best way to appear generous was
| actually to be generous since false displays of generosity were
| usually discovered and resulted in ostracism_
|
| I'll help anyone out at work. I'll teach anyone anything I know.
| I will never throw someone else under the bus. I'll take credit
| with "we" and blame with "I".
|
| I've been rewarded for this behavior at the places I've worked
| at.
| qsort wrote:
| The best mix is a lot of genuine collaboration with a tiny bit
| of backstabbing occasionally thrown in.
|
| Be genuinely useful, cooperative and valuable, that's a given.
| It speaks for itself, it's rewarding to you personally, and
| it's the only way to do not burn out.
|
| But don't be afraid to play hardball. Don't cover for
| incompetence. Don't be taken advantage of. Don't be a sucker.
|
| The simple wisdom of tit-for-tat is what I recommend.
| gpderetta wrote:
| FWIW, have had the same experience.
| tomger wrote:
| Same. Long term vs short term.
| ilikeitdark wrote:
| Elon Musk
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Fires most of the work force and the site is more pleasant than
| it was in 2020?
|
| Sounds like the opposite of Elon Musk.
| croes wrote:
| More fake check marks, totally pleasant.
| k8t wrote:
| He's the CEO and a huge voting share owner of his companies,
| why would he need to pretend to be working? Also, it's probably
| hard to make breakthroughs in space travel and electric
| vehicles doing fake work.
|
| There's been a huge amount of leaks, rumors, and reports about
| Elon from within and from without his companies. He's been
| accused of a lot of things, but fake working has not been one
| of them.
| croes wrote:
| The breakthroughs were done by his employees not Musk or do
| you praise Pope Julius II. for the Sistine chapel ceiling?
|
| BTW were is the breakthrough in Teslas?
| musingsole wrote:
| > BTW were is the breakthrough in Teslas
|
| You're either uninformed or being pointedly obtuse. Tesla
| has a massive patent portfolio -- starting with the
| roadster's gearless transmission.
|
| It's a point of fact that building a massive car company
| within a crystallized industry was a breakthrough in its
| own right.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-11-26 23:00 UTC)